In the aftermath of Argentina’s December 2001 financial meltdown, the political
class was widely blamed for the crisis that transformed this once predominantly middleclass
country into a poor one. However, when new presidential elections were held in
April 2003, establishment candidates generally placed higher relative to nonestablishment
candidates. To account for this puzzling election outcome, I examine the
role that Argentine centrist print media may have played through their coverage of
establishment and non-establishment candidates.
The research design involves content analysis of front-page news articles from
large, centrist newspapers, Clarín and La Nación, over an eleven-month period. To
analyze the data, I rely on count data and multi-linear graphs as well as correlation
coefficients and tests of significance. Testing two hypotheses, namely media attention
and framing, I find that establishment candidates received more media attention, and
perhaps more name recognition, than did non-establishment candidates. I also find that
centrist print media framed candidate strengths and weaknesses in particular ways.
Establishment candidates were portrayed as having competency and electability as their
strengths and integrity as their weakness. In contrast, their non-establishment rivals
were presented as having integrity as their strength and competency and electability as
their weaknesses.
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This study shows that both the extensiveness and the slant in coverage may have
advantaged establishment candidates over non-establishment candidates in terms of
their ultimate standing in the polls. A discussion of pre-election and post-election
survey results validate these findings by showing that media depictions of candidate
competency and integrity were reasons named for candidate support. The value-added
of this study is that it examines a macro level outcome in an original and systematic
way by focusing on candidate information that voters may have relied on when making
a voting decision. This, in turn, helps to shed light on the failure of democratic
accountability in the aftermath of Argentina’s worst financial crisis. It also highlights
how subtle yet significant media-supplied candidate information may have had in a
crisis-driven election.
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To my parents
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